A homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 24, 2021
Jer 31:7-9, Heb 5:1-6, Mk 10:46-52
What makes a good photo?
Composition, yes. Lighting, indeed. The right subject, absolutely.
Focus? Essential.
The same is true when we look. Look, and not merely see. Because the act of looking adds focus to all the visual inputs that can bombard us when we open our eyes.
A homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 17, 2021
Is 53:10-11, Heb 4:14-16, Mk 10:35-45
It’s such a cliché: “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” The activity is supposed to give us a sense of what it’s like to be that person, or a person of that person’s ethnicity, or socioeconomic situation, or belief system, but it’s a fundamentally flawed exercise.
I am not, and never will be, anything but a white male human descended from Irish-Welsh-French-Alsatian-Croatian-Slovak stock, raised in the suburban dead center of New Jersey, educated at Catholic grammar and boys prep schools in that aforementioned Central Jersey and at a small, private liberal arts college in the rural dead center of Pennsylvania.
Put me in Manolo Blahnik shoes and I will not be a supermodel. Put me again in work boots atop a pile of hot asphalt and I may labor but I will not be a laborer. Put me in moccasins and — at best — I am guilty of cultural appropriation.
We may try, we may try with every fiber of our being, to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but in the end, the most we can hope for is partial enlightenment.
A homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 10, 2021
Wis 7:7-11, Heb 4:12-13, Mk 10:17-30
It’s still possible to buy a needle threader, an incredibly brilliant yet simple tool that helps people with unsteady hands or so-so eyesight — or without the patience and tolerance for frustration — to pass a thread through the eye of a needle.
The fine wire goes through the eye first, and then the thread gets slipped through the lasso-like diamond on the other side.
A quick tug on the handle — or whatever it’s called — and the fine wire lasso hauls the thread through the eye.
Of course, you have to get the needle threader’s wire lasso through the eye first, but pound for pound that’s a far smaller challenge than jabbing a limp, frayed string through a tiny metal oval.
And, no, using a tool is not cheating.
A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 26, 2021
Nm 11:25-29, Jas 5:1-6, Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
Let’s imagine a 3- or 4-year-old is playing in the yard some morning when firetrucks race by, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The child looks down the street, sees that the house where the emergency crews are headed is on fire, and then rushes inside to tell Mom or Dad what’s happening.
This child has become a prophet.
S/he sees the facts (firetrucks driving to the house that’s aflame), she understands the truth (a burning house is dangerous to life and property), she knows what must be done (douse the blaze) and she anticipates what the best result will be (fire extinguished, no one hurt, little damage).
This is not soothsaying or Nostradamus-like fortunetelling. Prophecy is extensive observation, critical thinking, action-planning and well-formed prediction, and we all can do it.
A homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 19, 2021
Wis 2:12, 17-20, Jas 3:16—4:3, Mk 9:30-37
The core of our faith — the core of our relationship with our Creator and all of Creation — is the Two Great Commandments: Love God and Love Neighbor.
So beautifully simple and pure that even a child can understand them, to paraphrase a slogan, which is part of why Jesus is so often chronicled as embracing children, who in his day were considered replaceable chattel the same way women were.
So we have two radical ideas: Love can be uncomplicated and children and women are people with worth in God’s eyes.
Now what?
A homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 5, 2021
Is 35:4-7a, Jas 2:1-5, Mk 7:31-37
Every day is a day for miracles. And every day is a miracle in itself.
The sun rose today (well, actually, the Earth rotated so that we could see more and more of the Sun, but let’s not get too astrophysical …). Out there in the east, cruising through the south toward the west, with or without clouds, Sol is shining on Terra Firma.
A miracle.
God loves us and showers us with gifts, often when we don’t realize it.
More miracles.
Miracles for today and every day of our lives.
But what happens when we start to take miracles for granted and, more to the point, when we remove the role of the Almighty from miracles?
A homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 8, 2021
1 Kgs 19:4-8, Eph 4:30—5:2, Jn 6:41-51
My dad owned a few copies of “The Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis, a guide to living in the footsteps of Jesus that, according to Wikipedia, was composed in Medieval Latin circa 1418–1427. That’s way back there.
I first noticed a copy prominently displayed on the bookcase in our living room about 530 years after its publication, when I had learned to read chapter books with big words and, as a good Catholic school second- or third-grader, when I was in desperate fear and hatred of the Antichrist.
You see, my vocabulary at that time grasped big words but not nuances, and I thought the book was about a fake messiah, the way imitation vanilla was fake and tasted fake. I wanted nothing to do with an imitation Christ. I wanted The Real Jesus.
I didn’t realize the title meant how to imitate Christ. So it was years before I attempted to open the book and take in its message.
Ah, youth.
A homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 25, 2021
2 Kgs 4:42-44, Eph 4:1-6, Jn 6:1-15
Why, in Heaven’s name, would Jesus not want to be acclaimed as King of the Jews?
Probably because it would not have been in Heaven’s name.
A homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 18, 2021
Jer 23:1-6, Eph 2:13-18, Mk 6:30-34
In the movie “Hacksaw Ridge” — the brutal, bloody retelling of a critical battle in World War II’s Pacific Theater — Army medic Desmond Doss drags one wounded soldier after another to safety while flames and bullets rage around him.
Doss, a conscientious objector who volunteered to save lives on the front lines, prays for strength as he continues his mission all night.
“Just one more, Lord; just one more.”
It’s a true story.
A homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 27, 2021
Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24, 2 Cor 8:7, 9, 13-15, Mk 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43
Ever since video games evolved beyond Pong and Space Invaders, they’ve had a feature that every player has counted on:
The reset button.
Bang-bang! You’re dead.
Game over?
No, just hit the reset button and you get a new life.
Wow. Talk about a statement chock-full of theological, philosophical, psychological and practical significance!
